JULIAN HAWTHORNE.

"A plant is not to be studied as an absolutely dead thing, but
rather as a sentient being.... To measure petals, to count
stamens, to describe pistils without reference to their
functions, or the why and wherefore of their existence, is to
content one's self with husks in the presence of a feast of
fatness - to listen to the rattle of dry bones rather than the
heavenly harmonies of life. We have reason to be profoundly
thankful for the signs to be seen on every side, that the dreary
stuff which was called botany in the teaching of the past will
soon cease to masquerade in its stolen costume, and that our
children and our children's children will study not dried
specimens or drier books, but the living things which Nature
furnishes in such profusion....
"The reason of this radical change is not far to seek. Since man
has learned that the universal brotherhood of life includes
himself as the highest link in the chain of organic creation, his
interest in all things that live and move and have a being has
greatly increased. The movements of the monad now appeal to him
in a way that was impossible under the old conceptions. He sees
in each of the millions of living forms with which the earth is
teeming, the action of many of the laws which are operating in
himself; and has learned that to a great extent his welfare is
dependent on these seemingly insignificant relations; that in
ways undreamed of a century ago they affect human progress." -